For manufacturing tires, in particular carcasses of first stage tires, a tire building drum is known to be employed; onto which drum are supplied successive layers comprising, for example, a first layer consisting of an innerliner preassembled, along each lateral edge, onto an abrasion strip and an outer strip constituting a sidewall on the tire, and a second layer consisting of a body ply.
Presently, each of the said layers is generally fed onto the periphery of the tire building drum by means of a feeding device, which usually provides for cutting the layer into portions substantially equal in length to the circumferential development of the tire building drum.
The front edge of a portion of the said first layer is first placed by the operator onto the outer surface of the tire building drum and pressed so as to adhere to the same. Subsequent rotation of the tire building drum causes the said first layer portion to be wound onto the drum, which is then followed by supply of a portion of the next layer. The latter portion is wound onto the tire building drum so as to form a cylinder, and its opposite end edges spliced by means of mechanical pressure of stitching. Similar mechanical pressure is applied through the second layer, for splicing together the opposite end edges of the said first layer.
At the present, affixing the front axial edge of the first layer to the outer surface of the tire building drum and splicing together the opposite end edges of each layer are performed manually, and involve relatively long holdups during the tire manufacturing cycle. As, during such holdups, no additional operating and/or control functions can be performed by the splicing operators, this means a considerable amount of downtime is also involved.